Chapter 1 - University of the Western Cape

• has less impact on the environment
than many other industries,
• is based on an enjoyment of the
natural and cultural environment
and so is motivated to
protect them,
• can play a positive role in
awareness raising and consumer
education through its vast
distribution channels, and
• provides an economic incentive
to protect habitat that might
otherwise be converted to less
environmentally friendly land
uses (WTTC and IHRA 1999).
e above points can be made
equally in relation to tourism’s
potential contribution to biodiversity
conservation, because biodiversity
is a critical component of the
natural environment that tourists
enjoy. It is true, as this research
project illustrates, that tourism has
been growing and increasing particularly
in biodiversity hotspots in the
South. Given the rapid growth in
nature and adventure travel within
the global tourism industry during
the past 2 decades, it is reasonable
to assume that tourism’s growth
in these high biodiversity areas is
linked to their relatively unique
natural environments. Destroying
the environment on which the
success of the industry is based is
therefore like killing the goose that
lays the golden egg.
Tourism can, and sometimes
does, make significant contributions
to protected-area systems of conservation.
Direct benefits from tourism
to conservation can be clustered in
five areas (Brandon 1996):
1. a source of financing for biodiversity
conservation, especially
in legally protected areas;
2. economic justification for protected
areas;
3. economic alternatives for local
people to reduce overexploitation
of wildland and wildlife
resources on protected areas;
4. constituency-building, which
promotes biodiversity conservation;
and
5. an impetus for private biodiversity
conservation efforts.
In the South, tourism is often the
overriding justification for governments
to support the creation of
new protected areas. In addition,
since the mid-1980s, the trend
toward wildlife needing to “pay its
way” and for local communities to
be actively involved in conservation
efforts has led to the emergence of
ecotourism as a more responsible
form of nature-based travel that
promotes biodiversity conservation
and also brings benefits to
local communities (see Box 2).
During the seventh session of the
United Nations Commission on
Sustainable Development (CSD)
in 1999, UNEP reemphasized
the growing recognition that “the
involvement of local communities
in tourism development and operation
appears to be one important
condition for the conservation and
sustainable use of biodiversity.”
Obligations of donors and governments
under the CBD, with its
emphasis on sustainable use and
benefit sharing, have served to
reinforce this trend, resulting in
Box 2: Ecotourism—Linking Tourism and Biodiversity Conservation
“Ecotourism is an idea, a concept, that is challenging tourism as
we have known it. Defined most succinctly as ‘responsible travel
to natural areas, that conserves the environment and sustains the
well being of local people,’ ecotourism fundamentally reshapes
the basic precepts behind tourism, which is quite simply travel
undertaken for pleasure. Nature tourism, which is frequently but
erroneously considered the same as ecotourism, is defined as
travel to unspoiled places to experience and enjoy nature. Its close
cousin, adventure tourism, is described as nature tourism with
a kick—nature tourism with a degree of risk taking and physical
endurance. Nature and adventure tourism focus on what the
tourist is seeking. In contrast, ecotourism is qualitatively different.
It focuses on what the traveler does, plus the impact of this
travel on both the environment and the people in the host country.
Ecotourism posits that this impact should be positive. Ecotourism
is not, therefore, simply another niche market within the tourism
industry. Rather, ecotourism is a philosophy, a set of practices
and principles that, if properly understood and implemented, will
transform the way we travel.”
(Honey 2002)
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